Just how measly are the bank bonuses this year? Well they're not as bad as all that, thanks to the plunging pound. At the Americans - the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch - the pot is always in dollars so they're quids in, as it were.

As for Deutsche and the French banks, their bonus pools are in euros. Again, there will be some delighted London winners. Their financial year has a month or so to run and sterling is still falling. Not that any currency dealers at those banks would sell sterling out of self-interest...

Isla's movie looks so last year...
WITH conspicuous spending out of fashion, Disney's planned Valentine's Day 2009 release for Confessions of a Shopaholic could not be worse-timed. The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen's wife Isla Fisher as a label-obsessed fashionista. Movie moguls are said to be so nervous that the film, which has already been shot, will seem out of date that they are considering reworking the ending to reflect these grim times.

GOOD timing. Channel 4 News has come up with a yarn that the BBC has spent £160,000 on lavish launch parties this autumn — just as the Beeb was cutting more jobs and slashing budgets. The most expensive party, for drama serial Merlin at the Oxo Tower on the Thames, cost £45,000. Now City Spy is sure that Channel 4 News reporters, who are employed by ITN, are fearlessly independent. But this TV news report comes out just as Channel 4 is urgently lobbying for public subsidy, arguing that the bloated BBC should hand over some of its licence fee or commercial income to help C4's ailing finances...

Other funds are in fear of Madoff
IT has taken the Madoff affair to highlight the structural weaknesses in the hedge-fund industry. Specifically it shows: lack of clarity in that you cannot see what is going on; lack of understanding and evidence of investment process and discipline; lack of liquidity in assets invested in, so that when withdrawals are requested the firms cannot pay.
Crucially, the assets cannot be “marked to market” for a real valuation. These aren't unique to Madoff — they apply pretty much to all hedge funds. All Madoff has done is to expose the cracks. Several funds are terrified of being deluged with calls from investors wanting their money out — as things stand they have no means of repaying them.

MEANWHILE, there is much chat about that other phenomenon of the mad last few years: private equity. City Spy hears of cutbacks everywhere, of people leaving in droves. The private equity houses are also fearful of clients wanting their cash back. They can't sell the businesses they've got, they have tons of debt and there is no new funding.

AS the Madoff affair continues to baffle, the word on Wall Street is that some of the apparently sophisticated investors who were duped were not quite as naïve as they may have seemed. One observer said: “Of course they knew he couldn't perform the way he claimed. But this was a guy with brilliant contacts and impeccable connections. They thought he was insider dealing.”

WHAT is it with City skyscrapers and food? We've got the Gherkin and the Cheese Grater. Now there's to be the Can of Ham — the fanciful name given to the new building proposed for 60 St Mary Axe. According to Estates Gazette, some City planners are not impressed. One committee member said the City was fast becoming “a recipe for a salmon lunch”. He would like to see the more colloquial names abandoned.

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